"Crombleholme, Roy" <Roy(dot)Crombleholme(at)its(dot)lancscc(dot)gov(dot)uk> writes:
> I need to be able to set the default to european. I put datestyle =
> european in the postgresql.conf file but postmaster complained about this
> and would not start up.
That works in recent releases (7.3.*), but evidently you're running
something not so recent. I think setting PGDATESTYLE in the
postmaster's environment will work, or add "-e" to the postmaster's
command line flags. Or update to 7.3 ;-)
regards, tom lane